New and updated hints and tips for Windows PCs, technology news plus the best shareware and freeware around

Fishy Business

As you may have heard
laptop manufacturer Lenovo has been in trouble recently for selling machines
with a malware program called Superfish installed. It’s a nasty piece of work
that inserts ads into Google searches, which is bad enough, but it also creates
dodgy SSL certificates that could allow hackers to break into a secure
connection. There are also reports of it using iffy JavaScripts so all in all
it is definitely not something you would want on your machine. Apparently this
happened between September and December of last year and could have affected up
to 16 million machines. Lenovo reacted reasonably quickly with information on
how to remove the infection manually, but now it has released a free
tool that does the job automatically. Obviously Lenovo laptop owners should
use it without delay, but it’s worth everyone checking that their machines as
Superfish can turn up almost anywhere.

02/03/15

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News Briefs

Charging Around Ikea

It’s something many of us
do, and woes betide anyone who tries it at the weekend or during school
holidays. But now there’s a good reason to visit your favourite purveyor of
flat-pack furniture and tasty meatballs, from mid April UK stores will be
stocking a new range of lamps and tables with built-in wireless chargers. This will
be especially relevant to owners of recent-ish devices that support the market-leading
Qi technology, and these include models from Apple and Samsung. Even if that’s
not you, you can buy adaptors, built into phone covers. If that tickles you
fancy then fight your way to the lighting and tables department – preferably on
a weekday morning, before the lunchtime rush and look for a selection of not
half bad-looking lamps and bedside tables, with prices starting at a quite
reasonable-sounding £30.00.

0315

Bumpy Ride For Touchscreens

Some of us, me included,
still find it hard going to type more than a few lines on a tablet or smart
phone’s touch-screen keyboard. It is probably an age thing and those who grew
up – me again -- with mechanical and electrical typewriters often found the
transition to soft and mushy PC keyboards equally traumatic. Whilst it seems
unlikely that anything can be done to give touch-screen keyboards any semblance
of feel or movement, a company called Tactus Technology has gone some way to
improving the experience, with a case for the iPad Mini (with iPhone 6 Plus to
follow) called Phorm. The case has a
transparent film that overlays the screen. When a slide switch on the back of
the case is moved to the ‘on’ position, rows of small bumps over each of the keys
rise out of the screen, as if by magic. In fact no magic is involved, just oil,
pumped into the keybumps by the action of moving the slide-switch. This means
it’s entirely human powered, so there’s no need to worry about it sucking the
juice out of your device, or having to keep it fed with batteries. The bumps are
meant to make it easier for the fingers to find the keys and in theory this
will lead to fewer mistakes and the user should get faster as they get
accustomed to the keyboard. When the keyboard isn’t needed a quick flick of the
slide switch makes them disappear. It will cost $99 plus shipping; Tactus are
now taking pre-orders and deliveries are expected to begin in the Summer.

1602

Drone Attack Threat

It’s okay, no need to head
for the bunker, not just yet anyway, but it might be worth investing in a hard
hat, and keeping a watchful eye on the skies for those small, and not so small
hobby drones. They are now in danger of catching their very own malware
infection. It’s called Maldrone, and it has the ability to switch control to
another operator who can then do what they want with it, from pinching it by
flying it away, to crashing it into the ground, or whoever happens to be
underneath it at the time. So far Maldrone is just a proof of concept exercise,
developed by security expert Rahul Sasi, and unlike
previous attempts to hack drones, this one can, in theory, work on any make of
model. The only bit of good news is that it appears that a hacker has to get
very close to the drone to load the infection, so it’s unlikely to spread
throughout the population, but if you have one, just make sure you keep it in
sight, and well away from any suspicious looking characters waving tablets,
smartphones or laptops in the general direction of your flybot.

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